Soul Man (film)

Soul Man
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Steve Miner
Produced by	Donna Smith Steve Tisch
Written by	Carol Black
Starring	C. Thomas Howell Rae Dawn Chong Arye Gross James Earl Jones Leslie Nielsen
Cinematography	Jeff Jur
Editing by	Dave Finfe
Distributed by	New World Pictures
Release date(s)	24 October 1986
Running time	104 Minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$27,800,000

Soul Man is a comedy film made in 1986 about a man who undergoes racial transformation with pills to qualify for a Black only scholarship at Harvard Law School. It stars C. Thomas Howell, Rae Dawn Chong, Arye Gross, James Earl Jones, Leslie Nielsen, James B. Sikking and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

The title refers to the Sam and Dave song "Soul Man".

Plot

The movie's protagonist is Mark Watson (Howell), the pampered son from a rich family who is about to attend Harvard Law School along with his best friend Gordon (Gross). However, all of a sudden his father's neurotic psychiatrist talks his patient into having more fun for himself instead of spending money on his son. Faced with the horrifying prospect of having to pay for law school by himself, Mark decides to take up a scholarship, but the only suitable one is for African Americans only. So he decides to cheat by using tanning pills in a larger dose than prescribed to appear as an African American. Watson then sets out for Harvard, naïvely believing that blacks have no problems at all in American society.

However, once immersed in a black student's life, Mark finds that people are less lenient than he imagined and more prone to see him as a black person instead of a fellow student. He meets a young African-American student named Sarah Walker (Chong), whom he first only flirts with; gradually, however, he genuinely falls in love with her. As it turns out, she was the original candidate for the scholarship which he had usurped, and now she has to work hard as a waitress to support herself and her son George while studying. Slowly, Mark begins to regret his deed, and after a chaotic day—in which Sarah, his parents (who are not aware of his double life) and his classmate Whitney (Melora Hardin), who is also his landlord's daughter, drop in for surprise visits at the same time—he drops the charade and openly reveals himself to be white.

The film ends with Mark declaring to his professor (Jones) that he wishes to pay back the scholarship and do charity work to make amends for his fraud, and Sarah decides to give him another chance.

Reception and controversy

The film was widely criticised for blackface. When the film was released, some protests took place within the black community because Howell is in blackface make up throughout most of it. In 2008, New York Press critic Armond White would cite the movie as predicting the rise of Barack Obama, who entered the real-life Harvard Law School in 1988, and White declared that Soul Man was "easily the best movie ever set at Harvard."

Box office

In spite of the controversy the movie was a box office success.

Influence

Defunct mathcore band Botch has a track named "C. Thomas Howell as the 'Soul Man'" on their release, We Are the Romans.

External links

• Soul Man at the Internet Movie Database
• Soul Man at AllRovi
• Soul Man at Box Office Mojo